John Wyndham
July 10, 1903 – March
11, 1969
John
Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was born in the village of Knowle in
Warwickshire, England, but lived in EdgbastonBirmingham
until he was 8-years-old. At this point his parents - George Beynon
Harris and Gertrude Parkes - separated. He and his brother, the writer Vivian Beynon Harris, had no settled home after
this time. He was unhappy being shuttled through a series of English
boarding schools, including Blundell's School in Devon during the First
World War. His longest and final stay was at Bedales (1918-1921), which
he left at the age of 18, where he blossomed and was happy.
After
leaving school Wyndham studied farming for a while, changed
his mind about going to Oxford University and tried several ways of
earning a living, but mostly relied on an allowance from his family. He
eventually turned to writing for money in 1925, but before he decided
on this occupation, he had also tried a number of other careers, such
as law, commercial art and advertising. Throughout the 1930s he wrote
many stories, mainly for American periodicals. He wrote some detective
stories as well as science fiction.
Between
1940 and 1943 Wyndham was a government official, working in
the wartime censorship system. He then went into the army, serving as a
corporal cipher operator in the Royal Corps of Signals, and
participated in the Normandy landings.
He
was inspired by the success of his brother (who had published
four novels before Wyndham found fame) and altered his writing style
for his book The Day of the Triffids. The book proved to be an
enormous success and established Wyndham as an important exponent of
science fiction.
In
1963 Wyndham married Grace Wilson, whom he had known for more
than 20 years. He moved out of the Penn Club in London, and the couple
lived near Petersfield, Hampshire, just outside the grounds of Bedales
School.
Novels
The Secret
People
|
Stowaway to Mars
|
The Day of the Triffids
Fred Gambino
|
The Kraken Awakes
Mark Salwowski
|
The Chrysalids
Mark Salwowski
|
The Midwhich Cuckoos
Mark Salwowski
|
The Trouble with Lichen
Mark Salwowski
|
Chocky
Mark Salwowski
|
Web
Mark Salwowski
|
The Secret People
In
1964 a decadent pigmy race, originally of Egyptian descent, is
discovered in caverns under the Sahara.
Planet
Plane/Stowaway to Mars
An
international prize of one million pounds was
being offered to the first man to complete an interplanetary journey,
and Dale Courtance, a millionaire adventurer, characteristically
emereged as the British entrant. With ah hand picked crew he blasted
off from Salisbury plain in the spaceship GLORIA MUNDI, destination -
the planet Mars. Once free from Earth's atmosphere, they discover a
stowawy, a woman. Her extraordinary story helps prepare them for the
dangers they encounter on the Red Planet, and the fantastic world that
exists there.
The
Day of the Triffids/Revolt of the Triffids
After
a shower of strange meteors blinds most of
the earth's population. A Man and Woman who survive must make thier way
on the ruins of civilization . They face many threats not the least of
which is a plague of dangerous mobile plants which can kill with a
letheal sting.
*** I didn't and still don't
understand why everyone makes such a fuss over this book. It's an
okay story. All I can think about is that stupid quote, "In the
country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," huh, that guy never
read Wyndham.***
The
Kraken Awakes/Out of theDeeps
Ships
are sinking for no apparent reason. Strange
fireballs race through the sky above the deepest trenches in the
oceans. Something is about to show itself, something terrible and
alien. ***The suspence just
about kills you. Mike and Phyllis Watson are entirely likeable
and believable.***
The
Chrysalids/Re-Birth
Genetic mutation has
devastated the world. In the
bleak, primitive society that has emerged from its ruins, any sign of
deviation is ruthlessly hunted out and destroyed. David lives in fear
of discovery, for he is part of a secret group of children who are able
to communicate with each other by transferring thought-shapes into each
others minds. As they grow older they feel increasingly isolated. Then
one of them marries a 'norm' with terrifying consequences. ***My
son and daughters, all, read this book in grade seven english, just as
I did. This book is responible for my life-long love of
science fiction. It's the first book I lost sleep over . . . literally,
I couldn't put it down, I had to finish it a one go. The next
day, I asked my english teacher if Wyndham had written anything
else. I promptly signed out every book our school library
had. I was hooked and completely enamored. I still like to
re-read Wyndham every year or so.***
The
Midwhich Cuckoos/Village of the Damned
The
inhabitants of a peaceful English village all
fall asleep one long, hot summer evening. Months later, the women of
the village find themselves pregnant - and their children grow up with
golden hair and strange telepathic abilities...***When I first read this book, I
thought it was side-splittingly funny. A whole town of women of
child bearing years being preggars at the same time . . . Hey, I was
only in grade seven, cut me some slack. You definitely get a
different point of view when you become a mother. I've got to say
that this story terrifies me. It was made into a movie "The
Village of the Damned," I'm talking about the 1960's black and white,
oh-so-british, version, not the bloody awful remake with Christopher
Reeve. ***
Trouble
with Lichen
Diana
Brackley and Francis Saxover have discovered anti-aging properties in a
certain rare lichen. That's a good thing, right? Maybe, if
you're one of the Powers That Be . . . if they decide to tell the world
about their discovery. . . which, they quite rightly, decide
against . . . but can something like this actually be kept a secret?
***Diana Brackley was and still
is one of my heros (of course, a fictional character can be a hero,
duh!) I don't want to add any spoilers on this page. I
definitly recomend this book. John Wyndham shows remarkable
talent for getting inside the female psyche.***
Chocky
Matthew,
they thought, was just going through a phase of talking to himself.
And,
like many parents, they waited for him to get over it. But it
started to get worse, not better. Matthew's conversations with himself
grew more and more intense.It was like listening to one end of a
telephone conversation while someone argued, cajoled and reasoned with
another person you couldn't hear.
Then
Matthew started doing things he couldn't do before. Like counting in
binary-code mathematics.
So
he told them about Chocky - the person who lived inside his head.
Web
The
events depicted in Web
are written from the viewpoint of Arnold Delgrange, a man suffering
from what would now be described as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
They revolve around a failed attempt to establish a utopian
colony on an island in the Pacific Ocean
remote from civilization, which has suffered fall out and been cursed
by the original inhabitants. As a result, intelligent and communally
acting spiders have evolved on the island, acting in a manner that
endangers all life in the vicinity.
Collections
Jizzle
|
Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter
Richard Powers
|
The Seeds of Time
Mark Salwowski
|
Consider Her Ways and Others
Mark Salwowski
|
The Infinite Moment
Richard Powers
|
Sleepers of Mars
Colin Hay |
Wanderers of Time
Chris Foss
|
The Man From Beyond and other Stories
|
Exiles on Asperus
|
John
Wyndham Omnibus 1
|
John
Wyndham Omnibus 2
|
Jizzle
Jizzle
Technical
Slip
A
Present from Brunswick
Chinese
Puzzle
Esmeralda
How
Do I Do?
Una
Affair
of the Heart
Confidence
Trick
The
Wheel
Look
Natural, Please!
Perforce
to Dream
Reservation
Deferred
Heaven
Scent
More
Spinned Against
Tales
of Gooseflesh and Laughter
Chinese
Puzzle
Una
The
Wheel
Jizzle
Heaven
Scent
Compassion
Circuit
Compassion, processed
by the logic circuits of a robot care-giver. Does that sound like
a receipe for success to you?
More
Spinned Against
A
Present from Brunswick
Confidence
Trick
Opposite
Numbers
Wild
Flower
Bitter/sweet
tale, which describes the futility of fighting against progress, and
the oft-times beautiful tragedies that can result from that self-same
progress.
The
Seeds of Time
a foreword by John Wyndham
Chronoclasm
One of the best short works involving
time travel that I've ever read.
Time
To Rest
Earth is gone. A handful of
human survivors are going to pot as only humans can do in the mars
space port. One man breaks away, not wanting to be party to
it. He's mourning earth. He's avoiding the idea of a future
with the martians. It's a losing battle frought with angst and
tears.
Meteor
Survival
A
a spaceship headed for mars has a small problem. Now, they're
tumbling in orbit about mars and it's going to be several months before
help can reach them. Who, out of the cast of characters will
survive? This little tale will
get you, big time.
Pawley's
Peepholes
What would you
do if your many, many times descendents were showing up in your town -
sight-seeing, laughing and otherwise making pests out of themselves?
(Snort, chuckle,
chortle!)
Opposite
Number
Pillar
To Post
(A little to
dramatic for me . . . can't like absolutely everything by one author,
can you?)
Dumb
Martian
Dumb Martian? I
don't think so. This storey gets to me on so many levels, I just
don't know what I can say without giving away the whole ball of
wax. Let's see, there's degredation, physical abuse, mental
abouse, big man against fragile martian female . . . does that do
it? Oh, and I cheered my head off at the end.
Compassion
Circuit
Wild
Flower
Consider
her ways and Others
Consider Her Ways
Odd
Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy
MacRafferty?
Stitch in Time
Random Quest
Long Spoon
The Infinite Moment
Consider Her Ways
Odd
How
Do I Do
Stitch
In Time
Random
Quest
Time
Out
The
Best of John Wyndham
Sleepers of Mars
Sleepers
of Mars
Worlds
to Barter
Invisible
Monster
A gruesome
tale of an invisible creature from Venus that is little more than
mouths.
The menace eats several people before being blown up by the military.
The
fragments of the monster all begin to grow, spreading the danger.
(Harris
shows his distrust of the Military, a theme that will reoccur in his
later
novels.) Only once the creatures are covered with paint can they be
stopped.
The
Man from Earth/The Man From Beyond
A human,
discovered by the inhabitants of Venus, who has been in suspended
animation
because of a gas in a mysterious valley. The man confesses how he was
sent
on the first mission to Venus as a saboteur. The man succeeds at
killing
the rest of the crew, but only then realizes those who have sent him
will
not be rescuing him. The human warns the Venusians about his race but
they
tell him that the Earth has been a lifeless rock for millions of years.
The
Third Vibrator
A cautionary tale about the arms race well
before most people
worried about such things. The story tells of a modern inventor who’s
spirit
travels in time to see how the vibrator ray caused the destruction of
Atlantis
and Lemuria. The scientist is locked up as a lunatic when he destroys
his
own work which will lead to the rays re-discovery.
Wanderers
of Time
Before the Triffids
(Introduction by Walter Gillings)
Wanderers
of Time
A group of time travelers from several
different centuries get marooned in the far future. The world is now
run by insects, who
control giant robot-like machines.
Derelict
of Space
Child
of Power
The
Last Lunarians
Tells of the
first flight to the Moon which discovers ruins and Lunarians in
coffins.
The moon men are revived and attack the ship.
The
Puff-ball Menace
The
danger is a species of flesh-eating fungi that grows to beach-ball size
before bursting and infecting people. The spheres were intentionally
introduced
to England by a foreign potentate.
John
Wyndham wrote strong, imaginative fiction years before fame came
his way, and this is a collection of some of his pieces from those days.
Already
remarkable are his sense of movement, his sense of invention,
his sense of style. The title story of this collection foreshadows
frighteningly such later novels as The
Kraken Wakes
and The
Midwich Cuckoos
with its suggestion of time when man is no longer the dominant creature
on Earth.
And
The
Last Lunarians
and Derelict
of Space
show how well he researched his material, long before space ships had
struck out for the moon and the idea of interplanetary travel had
become commonplace.
This
is truly another fascinating piece of evidence of John Wyndham's
remarkable talent as seer and storyteller.
The Man From Beyond and Other Stories
The Best of John Wyndham 1932 - 1949
The
Lost Machine (1932)
A humane look at a robot from Mars that gets
stranded on Earth. The robot has many adventures before being adopted
by
a family of kind humans. It destroys itself rather than allowing itself
to be copied by Earth scientists.
The
Man from Beyond (1934)
The
Perfect Creature (1937)
The
Trojan Beam (1939)
Vengeance
by Proxy (1940)
Adaptation
(1949)
The Best of
John Wyndham 1951 - 1960
Pawley's Peepholes
(1951)
The
Red Stuff (1951)
And
the Walls Came Tumbling Down (1951)
Dumb
Martian (1952)
Close
Behind Him (1952)
The
Emptiness of Space (1960)
Exiles
on Asperus
Exiles
on Asperus (1933)
No
Place Like Earth (1951)
The
Venus Adventure (1932)
Visitors to Venus find two races sprung from
an
earlier expedition. The Dingtons, except for their coloring, are
exactly
like Earthmen. Their enemies, the Wots, are beastly fanatics who
despise
technology. The explorers, teamed with the Dingtons and their native
friends,
the Gorlaks, destroy the Wot threat.
The
John Wyndham Onimbus
The Day of The Triffids
The Kraken Awakes
The Chrysalids
Additional Cover Art
Back to Tirpetz'
Tales
